How it works: For the treatment of overweight and obesity. Doses typically start with a 0.25mg weekly dose, gradually increasing over several months until a higher sustained dose of 2.4 mg per week is reached by some people. How it’s taken: Injected weekly into the stomach, thigh or arm with an injection pen, similar to an EpiPen. Here’s a guide to what you need to know about the latest diet drugs: “They are not something to be taken by healthy people who just want to look a bit slimmer.”

“Most diet drugs have some pretty grim side effects, including constipation, headaches, nausea and oily diarrhoea with some,” Mellor says. Dr Duane Mellor, academic lead for nutrition and evidence-based medicine at Aston University Medical School in Britain, says anti-obesity medication is not for the faint-hearted. “It is absolutely 100% not an easy way out of obesity.”Īnd, like other drugs for obesity, it is not without side effects. “Headlines that suggest it is a miracle weight loss drug with instant results are misleading and potentially dangerous,” says Hearne.

Wegovy can be expensive, potentially costing €250 per patient per month. “Drugs such as Wegovy are evidence-based medications, prescribed by doctors and intended to be used alongside healthy diet and exercise habits and screening for effective treatment of the disease.” “Obesity is an incredibly complex disorder and we now know that advice to eat less and move more is not an effective treatment for people with chronic obesity,” says Aoife Hearne, a dietitian who lectures at South East Technological University (SETU) Waterford. In a study published last year that assessed the effects of a once-weekly semaglutide weight loss jab, Carel le Roux, an obesity physician at University College Dublin and co-author of the paper, concluded that semagultide in the form of Wegovy “may be so effective that the role of nutritional therapy may have to be redefined”.īut these drugs are not to be taken lightly. The drug is intended to be used alongside a diet and exercise programme for people with higher body weight or obesity to improve their health and has been shown to help people shed up to 15% of their body weight. With one in four Irish adults - almost 900,000 people - now classified as having obesity, some say the Wegovy could have a positive impact on the fight against obesity and type 2 diabetes.

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